Retaliation
Ugh, god.
This is beyond shocking. We have a President who acts like the President of only a portion of the United States, and an enemy to the rest. Heartbreaking. https://t.co/qNAL3vBsTb
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) April 12, 2019
White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.
Anything else? Plans to start wildfires near Democratic strongholds? Poisoning the water supply in Democratic strongholds?
The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that “there are PR risks as well.”
After the White House pressed again in February, ICE’s legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.
“No, Mr President, you can’t single out cities you consider enemies for punishment. That’s not how any of this works.”
Pelosi’s office blasted the plan.
“The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,” said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne. “Using human beings — including little children — as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”
You’ll never guess who was pushing it.
Updating to add:
The President of the United States of America tweeted this afternoon that he is considering transporting human beings he has captured for concentration in cities populated by Americans he considers his enemies.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 12, 2019
Just more failing state things
Wait, why is the left accepting Trump’s framing of this as a “punishment”? What happened to immigrants helping to build our communities, and making them stronger? What happened to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”?
That seems… shockingly insensitive.
A precedent can be found in Nero’s Rome.
http://www.jaysromanhistory.com/romeweb/christns/chrslion.htm
Karellen@3
Omg, a Trumper has found us! I feel really conflicted about responding to such disingenuous and nasty shit. “Shockingly insensitive “? You are talking about a govt that has deliberately taken children from their parents to make people afraid to claim asylum.
The key word there is “dumping”. The Australian govt did this a couple of decades ago, put Afghan refugees on a bus with $75 in hand and sent them off to Melbourne where private/religious welfare groups desperately scrambled to find them housing and support. It was a hugely unpopular move.
Today, there is a thriving Afghan restaurant business in Melbourne; joining the Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Greek,Vietnamese, Korean,African etc community groups in building up from nothing to successful and safe lives for their families and making our city one of the best in the world to live in.
There’d be no coffee, feta cheese, wine or spring rolls in Australia if not for migrants.
Tsss, Karellen isn’t a Trumper.
Karellen – Because asylum seekers and hoping-to-be immigrants aren’t inanimate objects for the government to parcel up and ship to cities of its choosing, and because as the article made quite clear, Trump and Miller wanted to do it to “retaliate” against Democrats, not to benefit the detained immigrants.
The argument reminds me of, well, many things that liberals demand be supported by the government, and conservatives counter with “You want it, you pay for it”. These are things we should support as a society, using part of our communal resources; those who are willing to help somewhat more should not be saddled with the entire bill.
The parts of the country that are most enthusiastic about the military are also most likely to be net recipients of federal funds. How different things would be if the government said “You want a military facility, you pay for it”. (It kind of works that way with sports stadiums, doesn’t it?)
Still awaiting that fiery asterioid…..
Sackbut, you have hit the nail on the proverbial head. It’s designed to put the entire problem on the cities that are kind enough to be welcoming, and the hope is that they get so overwhelmed with immigrants that have no home, no job, no money in the area that they begin to hate the same way that the rest of the country hates. “We’ll show you by making you responsible”. And they will, of course, deliberately choose those immigrants who have particular problems that are costly. Maybe they have some chronic illness. Maybe they are not able to work because they are disabled and must have extra care. Maybe they are violent, because, yes, there will be a percentage of migrants who will not be desirable citizens, just like there is a percentage of existing citizens who are not desirable citizens. The odds tell us that you are unlikely to get that many people without at least some risky individuals slipping through. So they pick the most problematic, the ones that the city will be swamped trying to find jobs, money, homes, food, etc for in order to use up all the city resources taking care of migrants that might otherwise be dispersed widely throughout the US. It’s a nasty game.
Karellen,
There isn’t a ‘frame’ here. It’s a threat by a nakedly corrupt and incompetent administration to dump asylum-seekers in cities they don’t know with no support and no recourse, with the (not very) implicit hope that they’ll fall in with or form gangs for protection and survival, and thus contribute to an increase in crime in the cities to which they’ve been consigned.
That is a far cry from a reasoned, methodical, supportive, and most importantly *funded* resettlement policy.
@learie #4 – my “shockingly insensitive” comment was based off of one way of reading the section I quoted which immediately sprang to my mind, which was that immigrants were being compared with poison. i.e. those people were literally poisonous.
I know that’s not what Ophelia actually meant, because… well, I read this blog and I know she’s not like that, but it still seemed like a really insensitive comparison to make.
Yes, I know the Trumpistas are the scum of the earth for their deliberate and malicious policy of tearing families apart (and for many of their other awful policies besides), but saying “Well, those people over there are worse” does not excuse us from our own bad behaviour.